Summer Storm
by lynnxlady
Summary: [Oneshot] [Souten x Kanna yuri] [Futurefic] Who will remember you when you're gone? Souten and the value of being a legend, and Kanna along for the ride.


A/N: Oneshot written for the 30shards community on livejournal. I chose to do my shards on Kanna, and this is for theme #1 'legend.' Futurefic, Souten x Kanna, with side Souten x OC and implied Souten x Shippou.

--

Hiten would talk about the bloody rush of battle while she sat at his feet, her attention rapt. She would breathe in his scent and think of him as a hot summer storm. When the grandson of a grandfather's brother came to her, he looked a little like him, with his dark braid and his worn armor. His temper ran like Hiten's had, and his dreams ran like her father's. He said to her _we will be legends_.

What's the value of that, Souten thought but didn't say. Instead, she put away the crayons the kitsune boy had given her years before, and took out her father's spear and sword. She put away, too, being young and dreaming of someone who was not there. In the autumn of her fourteenth year, she wed her kinsman Raiden. In the spring of her sixteenth, she wedded war.

--

His youkai and some who had once been her father's amassed at their side, and they rode first on the tanuki clans. She rode on Koryuu, who was not so small and weak anymore, who was a battle steed fit for a conqueror now. _Conqueror,_ she whispered at night, and for all she said it softly, it sounded like the roll of thunder. At first it did not fit well in her mouth, because this wasn't her dream. It was only that conquering was a rather traditional youkai's occupation. But she was a thunder lord, so the thrill of battle fairly sang inside her and soon she learned to want it.

She lived like she fought and fucked: like lightning, fast and hot and cruel. She looked for redheads everywhere they went, but eventually this was only out of dreary habit, dreary because she gave her safe child's love up for dead. She mourned him, and this feeling too was hot and sharp in her breast.

--

"We're going to burn out too quickly," she said to Raiden once. They still stunk of battle, and her body was weary and worn, but when he reached for her, adrenaline jumped in her veins. She felt scraped raw but lit alive all in the same moment. Her mouth came crashing down on his.

He only laughed at her, but she could sense it. They were seeping slowly into their graves. They were the tail end of an era, and they were not their grandfathers, nor the great inu lords of their generation.

So she lived her life like flash fire, like her summer storm brother had—and wasn't he dead, and Manten too? And hadn't it been a hanyou youth that had slain them? –And if that hanyou still lived, he had likely forgotten them; no one at all would remember them when she was gone.

That was when she saw the value of being legends.

--

It was when her husband brought her home a captured slave that she learned life didn't always spill hot into her hands, that desire could freeze the blood in her veins.

"Are you a spider youkai?" she asked dubiously, tracing the scar on her back with her fingertips.

"No."

"What breed, then?"

"I am nothing," the girl said. That was when the skin on her breasts prickled, nearly painfully, and she wondered how someone could say that so flatly. A bead of cold slid down her spine, and she wanted—something.

"Nothing? Or a nothing youkai?" she asked.

Nothing, or a nothing youkai, whichever pleased her most; it mattered not, the girl told her.

--

The girl was called Kanna, and she was not really a girl, not really. She was small and thin, but she had small breasts and subtle hips, but that was not really it. It was the way she was so serious and quiet that surely disqualified her from girlhood.

"Were you ever a girl?" she asked her once, teasing, when her thoughts went down that path.

"I suppose I was a girl once. I was never a baby. I wasn't made that young," she replied, and did not explain. But cold ran across her skin, and Souten did not want to know what unnatural thing had made Kanna.

--

She used Kanna to wash her hair and braid it down her back, to sharpen her weapons and polish her armor. She never feared when Kanna had her sword in her hands; her palms were uncalloused, her forearms weak. "What does nothing wield in battle?" she asked once.

"A mirror, to gather up souls."

Souten feared a little, then.

--

Once among her spoils, she brought home a flower, red and flawless, and gave it to Kanna for her hair. It stood out violently against her pallor, like a beautiful splash of blood. Souten looked at it with a strange sort of satisfaction; it made her seem real.

She wondered aloud if the girl even bled; Kanna asked her (matter-of-factly) if the lady wished to see. Souten felt the cold again in her hot thunder lord's blood, and shook her head.

That night, she dreamed nothing dreams of nothing girls for the first time. She woke in the dark, shivering, full of a want that was half fear, and clenched her thighs around the feeling.

--

After Kanna had served her for a decade and a year, Souten put a mirror in her hands. "Does it please you?" she asked her.

"Yes, Souten-sama," Kanna said. The honorific was neither respectful nor mocking; it just was, as it always was. Souten imagined she would speak in that flat what-was way even if she had just kissed her breathless, even if she had her tongue inside her.

"From now on, you will ride with me on Koryuu. I want to see what you can do with that." She ignored the way the hair on her arms rose at the thought of having _that_ at her back. She couldn't stand to be afraid, especially not irrationally.

--

"My…father, I suppose is the word," Kanna said the first time she went with her. It was one of the rare times she spoke on her own initiative. "My father was a quiet sort of legend decades ago, the sort no one remembers but that sits like poison in their thoughts anyway. He is dead and truly forgotten now."

"That's nice," Souten said, waving her hand dismissively. "Help me with my armor."

"I have heard Raiden-sama's words to you. You will not be a legend; the time for those has past."

Souten looked up sharply. The words frightened her a little; they echoed her own thoughts and made them harsher. But she only laughed. "What do you know?"

"I watch," she said. After that she was quiet, and never spoke of it again, but Souten thought of it often.

--

It was under a bloody sunset some years later that Souten dragged her against her and brought her mouth down on hers, hard—and Kanna's mouth was cold and yielding. She slipped her tongue between her lips and Kanna did not resist, nor did she kiss back. "Do you like it or not?" she asked in frustration, letting go of her kimono. She wanted to shake her into life.

"I like it," Kanna said, and Souten felt the words in her bones. Another kiss, then, fierce, and still Kanna only stood there.

"You would be still and say you liked it, no matter what I did, wouldn't you?" Souten said angrily.

"Yes."

"Whatever made you made you well," Souten said, turning away.

"Yes."

Souten had to stomp her foot, then, because her anger was boiling over and she knew Kanna wouldn't yell or hit back and that wasn't any fun. If she was Kanna, she would laugh and call after her, pointing out that _legends_ don't stomp their feet. But then, she would've kissed back, too.

--

Souten hacked up blood and snapped that she was _fine, just fine_ at Kanna, even though she hadn't asked. Autumn was poised on the brink of winter; dried leaves crumpled underfoot.

She staggered and had to use her spear as a support. "I've always wondered what my life would've been like if I'd ever looked for a boy I loved, not that I'd have admitted it, or just left in general, instead of waiting until Raiden came," she said. "Would I have loved it better?"

There was no answer, of course, so a little while later she said, "Look into that mirror of yours and tell me."

"It does not tell those sorts of things."

"What does it tell, then?"

"I have told you—"

"No, what does it tell _now_; how near are that damn wolf's men?"

Kanna looked and showed her. They were dressed lightly in furs and leather, cutting easily along their trail; if Souten recognized the landmarks rightly, their backtracking at the river hadn't delayed them anyway. Her eyes went wide as they came upon a bent tree in Kanna's mirror. She swore softly as she reached for her sword.

"There are too many to handle with a mirror and a sword," Kanna said. Trying to part the forest with her stare, Souten spat, because she knew it was true.

When Kanna touched her jaw with cold fingers, she jumped. When she touched her mouth lightly to Souten's, she froze, heart pounding in her chest, and not only from the wound. "I will miss you," she said.

"What—" Souten flung an arm out in her direction, but blood loss made her limbs too heavy, so that Kanna slid easily out of reach.

"Stay here," she commanded, only able to manage a bit of weary anger. She was fading, she thought, and knew it was true when that failed to make her angry. "Once you said you'd do anything and say you liked it; stay here then and love it."

"The one who made me made me well, as you said, and I left him in the end," Kanna said, perhaps a little regretfully. For once there was an expression on her face. "I will remember you, for whatever that's worth."


End file.
